


Missing Scenes

by greenegret



Category: Valdemar series - Lackey
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:52:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenegret/pseuds/greenegret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two missing scenes from Arrow's Fall. There's no description of torture or violence, but there's mention of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missing Scenes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Semmi (semirose)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semirose/gifts).



Skif dropped his head into his Companion Cymry's side, sick with horror and grief, trembling with exhaustion. What they'd done to Talia… What the fact of it said about the way Kris had died… They were monsters. He'd met monsters before; he'd spent his life trying to stymie or fight them in one way or another since he was an orphaned toddler in Londer's house, but this! He swallowed hard, the metallic burn of acid and iron at the back of his throat marking a mix of bile and blood from a bitten tongue.

It wasn't fair that the sounds of the camp went on, that insects were buzzing, that he could hear the wind in the night-hidden trees. It seemed like everything should stop, everything but the frantic energy inside the Queen's tent as the Healers tried to save Talia both from the hideous tortures she'd suffered and the poison she'd taken to end them.

He felt a shadowed presence at his side and rolled his head to face it, too weary to be really interested in anything but solitude. Alberich. Lurking horror visible in his usually unreadable eyes, also seeking comfort in his Companion. Skif felt a faint sense of relief – Alberich had also seen horrors before, and would not try to demand a response that the younger Herald was too stretched to give.

"Monstrous, Ancar is," came the rough voice. Skif could hear a tension in the Weaponsmaster's voice that most might not. Alberich was as self-contained and dour as ever, but he was as deeply affected by Talia's state as anyone. "Horrible, this is. More, because they are Heralds, and we love them."

Skif made a strangled sound, half-laugh, half-sob, turning to face him without leaving Cymry's supportive side. "Is that why it tears so much? Havens, Kris was the first Trainee I ever met! And Talia… oh, Talia…"

His eyes burned with tears he could not shed, too dehydrated by the massive expense of energy needed to help pull Talia to the bivouac. His had been a very small share of the total, but a very large share of his own. Most of the energy and all of the organization had come from Rolan, Gwena, and Ahrodie, but every Companion and thus every Herald in the camp had contributed a large portion of reserves to the effort to pull the Queen's Own out of whatever hell she had lain dying in to the relative safety of the camp.

"An impossible feat, was it not? To move a living person from an unseen there to an unfamiliar here."  
Skif responded, letting the conversation pull him back, the banal discussion giving him distance. He knew Alberich knew as much or more as he did about the day's events. "Dirk… Dirk said that it was possible. Difficult, but possible. Remember Herald Christa, on her Internship? That's how she died, saving children from a fire."

"Oh, aye. It is a hard thing." He reached over to offer Silk a water skin. The younger Herald stared at it for a second, reaching to grab it. He hadn't realized how very thirsty he really was.

Skif swallowed, and then said suddenly, "It should have been me. Not Kris. If it had been me, maybe, maybe… I'm more used to sneak attacks and treachery, and who is better at creeping and escaping? He was only a little more senior. Talia's Queen's Own, but I've had my whites longer."

Alberich issued a sound as much like a snort as a laugh, "Think you that I do not think such things, every time? Always, I wonder, could I have, could I have had the right trick, the right experience, to escape, where I failed to give it to my students? Never is this a good thought. Never useful. Always, the person sent is the person sent. What happened happened. No Gift allows the past to change. It is Foresight and Farsight, not Hindsight."

Skif stared at him, this the longest speech he'd heard from Alberich that wasn't a list of instructions or observations about one of their targets in the City. It made sense. It didn't change his feelings. Nor, he suspected, Alberich's feelings. Maybe it would later. Alberich's company, Cymry's company, and even Alberich's Kantor helped to chase away the horror, a bit.

"No. No Hindsight." Skif snorted, adding "except the common sort, that even my n'uncle Londer probably felt."

"I couldn't have gone. Don't have the rank – coming from Londer rather than a pretty highborn family, though even Orthallen said I should have gone," Skif said, acknowledging the fallacy of his wish to be there in Kris's place.

"Orthallen?" asked Alberich, straightening slowly, his face suddenly alert.

"Yesss… Now that is strange, isn't it? He loathes me. I took it as belittling Talia's mission at the time, but, it wasn't anything he could see as trivial." Whatever Orthallen's dislike of the Queen's Own Herald, and whatever his political maneuvering to diminish her position, he certainly couldn't deny that preparing the way for a full Court visit to a foreign Court, first in a generation, was an important task.

"Strange, it is. It is indeed strange. Many things about this are strange as well as horrible." Alberich was frowning as he stood with one had resting on Kantor's barrel. Skif knew that the Weaponsmaster shared his own dislike and distrust of Lord Orthallen, despite his closeness to the Queen.

Skif agreed, his mind working on the puzzle of Orthallen – one more oddity to add to that picture. Far better to think of a known enemy than to dwell on a new, unknown one, or the terrible uncertainty of Talia's life.

"We will remember," said Alberich. "As we always do."

"Yes," said Skif, levering himself away from Cymry's side. "I need sleep." " He hesitated, staring gratefully at the older man, one of his closest friends among the Heralds, unusual though their friendship was, and based upon shared status as illicit agents of the Queen. He quirked his mouth in a poor facsimile of a smile and turned to go seek his bedroll.

"And food. Eat. Or reaction headache," ordered Alberich, watching him walk away, staggering slightly.

==========================================================================================================

Skif waited next to the cook-wagon, sniffling with an apparent cold, hunched a bit with a cloth wrapped around his throat. He wore a lower servant's uniform rather than Whites, and blended in well with the mismatched horde of local Hold's servants, defected Hardornen Border guards, individual Lords' servants from the Court, Court servants and others who filled the grounds of the borrowed border Hold after Ancar's treachery had revealed the dangers of the proposed Court visit.

He and Alberich had decided to investigate some of his perennial allies on the Council after the awakened Talia's revelation of Orthallen's treachery. Evidence of a long-standing alliance between such a highly placed Noble and the murderous Ancar was alarming enough, but they had no way of knowing the extent of the rot. It was entirely possible that the former nanny to the Valdemaran Court and current evil Mage Hulda had corrupted others of the Council. Orthallen's prior assassination of Queen Selenay's father showed that he had already been a traitor when he'd allied with Hulda, but that didn't mean she hadn't spread her grasp to others.

Lord Gartheser, Orthallen's little toady, Skif mused as he wandered with his stew, a hard rind of bread serving as his bowl, the perfect picture of a tired, miserably unwell servant looking for a peaceful place to sit and eat. He found a stack of wagon tack near Gartheser's encampment, half hidden by the wagon holding his lordship's pretty court clothing.

The rather wretched looking servant appeared to have found it by accident; in reality, it had been moved to its protected position the day before, stating that it was blocking a possible route for a quick exit by Heralds. He slowly ate the stew, plain and hearty. If anyone had been tempted to join him, they were put off by his wet, hacking cough. No one wanted to risk the grippe.

Just as he began to tear at the last of the bread-bowl, a great racket and confusion sparked as about thirty large, squealing, shrieking pigs came rushing and charging forward, sending people running, horses rearing, and equipment falling. A storm of noisy recriminations started up, as the Guards and the local Hold's pig keepers began yelling, each blaming the other for allowing the pigs loose and for not catching them quick enough.

The poor, sick servant fell over backward, landing on the other side of his pile of tack and then scrambling up and bolting away through the encampment behind him, abandoning his bread behind him to a lucky pig.

In the confusion and noise, it was easy for the apparently terrified servant to vanish with all of the other running servants. Skif slid quietly into the wagon Garthesar slept in – they doubted he would keep anything sensitive far from him.

Skif went straight to each corner piece of the wagon, checking each of the hiding places that were likely to be built into a wagon like this, searching each quickly and methodically. He was fortunate that Alberich had long before run through the means to find and violate each, wagons being out of his former experience in the Exile's Gate. He was doubly fortunate that Alberich's Foresight had given him the strong feeling of a need to check the corners of this wagon – he would never have had enough time to do a thorough search of the entire space.

Jewels, coins, a knife, dust, precious oils and scents… He scowled – there was so little time. The last, of course, unless one of the others was more important than it looked. Top box, behind the carving of the lily, empty. No – something small, and wrapped. A cipher roll! Very thin rod of metal, with different shapes to spin, to unlock a cipher. Not treacherous to have one, but indicative. Possibly also for some lecherous aim of Gartheser's – known to be a favorite among the more free Ladies. Make a rubbing of it anyway, tuck it away in pouch.

Base hiding hole – press this, and that… no… this, then… no… so… yes! Got it. And so, papers at last. My darling Lord… no! Local seneschal reports problems with trade, no… what's this? Ciphered. Well. And from Orthallen, not ciphered, but still…

Skif looked each one over carefully, sending the image to Cymrie, who could pass it entire to Elspeth, who would be able to hold it long enough to recopy it. Even the love letters might be important. He'd been paying attention with part of his mind for all of the not-even ten minutes that he'd been in the wagon, to the noise that was still raging outside – dying down now. Time to go.

'Chosen!' came Cymrie's warning voice in his mind – she stayed quiet while he worked to avoid distraction, but her occasional interruptions were always important.

Skif finished replacing the papers and closing the hide, and slid down and dropped behind the wagon, sliding further down the short distance back to Gartheser's servants' wagon, and then the sickly servant mixed in with the more organized chaos of the pig-chasers.

Some time later, Herald Skif rejoined the group of people hovering near Talia's room, where he could often be seen.

Elspeth looked up at him from her writing desk in the office two down from Talia, where she was already working on writing out the ciphered pages. Alberich leaned against the wall, none the worse for his involvement in the release of the pigs, and Dirk sat near him, fidgeting, clearly wanting to be elsewhere as much as here. Skif felt a wave of pity – imagine finally acknowledging a very long denied lifebond only to be left to watch your beloved suffer agony at the hands of Healers…

"This better not be another piece of romantic drivel, Skif!" she said with a grimace. "It's a terrible nuisance to write out, and only useful if we can figure out the cipher from your rubbing." The young Heir looked exhausted already, tired with worry for Talia, with grief for Kris, and fear for the future, just like all of them.

Of course, she's running half the kingdom, Skif thought. And if it weren't that we're so concerned about Ancar and his mages and being invaded, we'd count it as the entire kingdom. She doesn't need this, too.

Skif told them about how it had gone – the description of the pigs even drew smiles and short chuckles, the first from most of them in what seemed like ages. He sat composing himself, ruminating on the situation as the others discussed the problem of treachery on the Council. He looked at Elspeth again, as she struggled with copying down the strange marks of the cipher. She was so young – sometimes they forgot that she was just a Trainee, still only fourteen.

"Why do we need to find proof for each Councilor?" Skif asked suddenly. He was remembering the very first time he had spoken with – or been spoken to, more like – Alberich, and many other occasions since.   
The others stared at him, waiting – as the need to identify further traitors was so obvious and so great, he must have something more to say.

"Why don't we use this as a reason to Truthspell all of the old badgers?" he continued, liking this more and more as he spoke. "Let's ask them who they're REALLY loyal to."

Alberich responded slowly, clearly thinking about this suggestion. "Ask them too much, we cannot, or violate them unnecessarily we will. Most are not traitors."

Elspeth started to smile, saying "We'll just ask that one question. There's justification for that. And if anyone can't answer, why, we'll ask them to leave. Immediately." Her voice was cold on that last phrase. Orthallen had departed immediately upon proof of his treachery – at the end of her throwing knife.

Alberich nodded. "Yes. And decipher the cipher we will, but not you. You have other duties. Traitors must go first. Ciphers must not be discussed until the Council is cleansed."

"Right. Don't warn them," Dirk nodded himself.

The four conspirators smiled at each other, with varying degrees of grimness. The Council members would be watched closely until they had all removed back to the Capitol and reconvened. Especially Lord Gartheser.


End file.
